Category Archives: Norfolk

Last month I posted on hanami in Japan; on how the fleeting beauty of cherry blossom captured the Japanese imagination and seemed to unite the country in an appreciation of the transitory nature of the seasons. I observed that we … Continue reading →

On a dismal February afternoon in Norwich, taking a walk is done as much for exercise as it is for any other more worthy or creative reason. The raw, grey day makes the city seem gloomy, uninviting even, but at … Continue reading →

Norwich, mid January. At dusk over the past few weeks an avian spectacular has been witnessed taking place in the sky over St Stephen’s Street. As the daylight dwindles around the four o’clock mark a swirling murmuration of roosting starlings … Continue reading →

There’s a good omen as we leave Heacham before dawn: the sharp cry of a tawny owl emanating from somewhere in the woods. Fifteen minutes later, walking from Snettisham RSPB car park towards the beach at The Wash, there are … Continue reading →

October 31, 2014. Samhaine – All Saints’ Eve – Halloween – take your pick. Old-school seasonality seems to be in retreat as autumn suddenly slips back a season in denial of shortening daylight hours and the termination of British Summer … Continue reading →

Earlier this year I wrote of Norfolk’s radical tradition and how this would be the centenary year of the Burston School Strike, the longest running strike in British history that lasted from 1914 to 1939. Last Sunday the annual rally took place in … Continue reading →

Edgelands are everywhere, orbiting our towns and cities like unbeautiful rings of Saturn: non-places, junkspace, transitory transition zones that lie between that which is unequivocally urban or rural. Transitory because they are spaces in flux, with fluid geography that today … Continue reading →

Norfolk doesn’t tend to be the first place that comes into mind when you think of political radicalism but, surprisingly perhaps, there is a strong tradition here and the East Anglian countryside has not always been as true blue as some … Continue reading →

Well, it is finally out – my new book Slow Travel Norfolk. Here is a brief extract from the book about an extraordinary rook roost that takes place at Buckenham Carrs each winter: A large wooded area just east of Buckenham … Continue reading →

A little way south of Norwich, standing atop what counts for a hill in these parts, is a tiny roundtower church nestled amidst trees. All Saints Church stands above the small village of Keswick in a crumpled corduroy landscape of wintry ploughed fields. … Continue reading →